History can resemble the peeling of an onion. There are multiple layers, each one resting on top of each other and, when peeled back, can provoke an emotion—anger, happiness, empathy, or a score of others. Like an onion, that can often provoke tears.
ECW’s Phillip Greenwalt offers an example. “On a recent trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—a place steeped in American Civil War history—I stumbled upon some early 20th century history in a place I would have never expected,” he says. “A short distance down the Emmitsburg Pike from the spot where Major General George Pickett’s Confederate division charged across on its way to Cemetery Ridge, I stood reading about Camp Colt, a military installation used for tank training prior to deployment of tank corps soldiers in World War I.”

And, of course, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s post-presidential farm sits just a mile or so to the southwest of that same spot.

Just as there are multiple layers of history at Gettysburg, Emerging Civil War is about to embark on another onion-peeling adventure. After much thought and discussion, we are excited to announce the launch of “Revolutionary War Wednesdays.”

Taking the lead of the Civil War Trust as it reached out to topics related to the American Revolution, we hope to encourage similar interest and, of course, preservation. Starting next week, we will offer one post on the American Revolution every Wednesday. He hope to touch on military, social, political, material culture, and preservation topics.

This will not preclude our usual Civil War era-focused posts. Our focus is and always will be the American Civil War. But we hope, by adding a few regular insights in the American Revolution, we will help draw a new audience to our founding era and, in doing so, explore some perspectives into how the nation came to fight a bloody Civil War just 80 years after its break from Great Britain.